2011 - The year that was

4368 hours on 458 640 meters of tape, over 365 ¼ days, into over 11 000 households, onto 3500 LCD screens, using 51 422 DSTV smartcards tuned into DSTV channel 901, across one of South Africa’s biggest digital signage network, and live-streamed across the planet - live. That doesn’t include the countless hours of digital signage posters, displays, interactive screens, the millions of customers who’ve watched the thousands of monitors positioned across the length and breadth of South Africa. Nor does it take into account the hundreds of thousands of megabytes of streaming video, conferencing, live events, and training videos that was sent via web-feeds and satellite transmissions. And who can forget our broadcasts to the blackberry and iPhone cellphones. In short Global Access broadcast everywhere, anywhere, live to everything and anything capable of receiving a connection.

2011 will always been remembered by the Global Access team as the year of the Live Broadcast. By far and away the most active service demanded by our clients, the idea of being able to broadcast almost instantly a message from anywhere in the world, to anywhere else in the world with dynamic interactive feedback has taken hold. Global Access was involved in some of the more dramatic live events in the 2011 broadcast field: The Absa Financial results, the MTN interim and end year financial results, and the world’s first live broadcast of three simultaneous urology operations live from three different theatres to hundreds of specialist viewers across Southern Africa.

Making all these live broadcasts possible was Global Access’s latest addition of a true HD fly-away kit – a multi-camera rig that allows us to go anywhere, and broadcast live from anywhere in HD, be it a CEO’s office in Cape Town, or a farm workers cottage in rural China. Coupled to this our studios have seen the usual clients walk away with dozens of shows under their belts – from talk shows to game shows, from staff communication shows to competition shows. The studios have been busy. And busy in different ways to! A new talk series for web-streaming saw our massive green-screen being used live on air for multiple camera angles.

One of the biggest events of the year was a private broadcast from Cape Town to over 16 countries – live and broadcast into Namibia and the rest of SA. On the dry-hire side, where our studios are hired without gear, our biggest studio of 560 sq. meters played host to a new local SABC 1 comedy series, and has been booked from 2012 for more! Ford used our smaller studio for its new launch of one of its more fantastic 4x4’s available in stores soon…

But Global Access isn’t only about the creation or transmission of world class content for the plethora of display devices out there, it’s also about managing content on networks. Digital Signage has had its busiest year running six new installations simultaneously. 35 kilometres of category 5 cable was laid out, connecting over 50 interactive kiosks, 1200 media players, on over 450 sites together, all controlled from our central hub in Johannesburg CBD.

With new product offerings such as advanced queue management software, capable of detecting and analysing queue waiting times, auto-alerting in store managers to queue problems, registering teller activity as well as a host of other diagnostic features designed to improve our clients businesses, the digital signage division has positioned itself as an industry leader in South Africa. A recent addition to the already impressive stable of clients is the Airports Company of South Africa, so watch out OR Thambo! A Global Access Digital Signage team is about to revolutionize the screens in 2012.01.27

2011 also saw one of the company directors leaving, and a new one coming. Brad Wilson has assumed the mantle of company director, and now stands alongside long time serving Ronnie van Wijk. Brad has been with the company for several years in the digital signage division. Looking forward to 2012 projected grow is between 20% – 25% as our services and products reach out to larger and more diverse clients and viewers than ever before. Concurrent to that, Global Access as always operated within the principle of building long term relationships with our customers, and 2012 sees us working closer than ever before with our existing clients.

2011 – The year of live broadcast. Allowing you to ‘Access your audience’. Allowing you to ‘Access your true business potential’.